Friday, February 1, 2008

The Nipissing Scouting News blog is a fine example of a scouting blog. It does a good job of staying focused on local news and events. It looks crisp and sharp. But beyond that it does more.

This blog is well organized and provides its readers with a great portal to Scouting and supporting resources on the Internet. The two sidebars have links for organizations, newsletters, and a wealth of other resources. There is also something special.

The site includes a Google custom search engine (CSE) widget setup to search a large number of scouting resources. I liked it so much that I asked the webmaster for permission to use it! Now you see it on our sidebar - at the top! This is a great resource because you can type in things like "skits", "songs", "rope", "knots", "astronomy" and have a far better chance at finding an appropriate page. It may not be the Scout blogging network I was thinking of, but it sure is useful.

Thanks to Ken Sitter of the 3rd Widdifield in Nipissing!

Update 2008-2-15: I checked out how to create a Google CSE widget. It looks pretty simple. You need a Google account to start.Update 2008-2-24: The homepage for this Google CSE can be found here.